


The Land of the Living

by msgenevieve



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Gen, Imprisonment, Missing Scenes, Multi, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-11
Updated: 2008-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 15:36:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msgenevieve/pseuds/msgenevieve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Land of the Living

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for #222, Sona and #401, Scylla. Written before Scylla aired.

~*~

  
_There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning._

~ Thornton Wilder

On the first day, they pump her full of morphine.

It does nothing to stop the vivid flashes of movement and sound flickering in her head. 

She remembers the feel of the gun in her hand, cold and hot at the same time. She remembers the look on the Company man’s face as the life left his body.

She remembers Michael kissing her, then throwing away his freedom to save her.

She remembers begging a stony-faced Panamanian police officer to let her see him, to see Lincoln, to let her make a statement. She remembers how bright the sunlight was when they’d literally marched her out of the police station, telling her to go back to the US, that there was nothing she could do for her friends. She remembers walking through the street, dust kicking up beneath her shoes, her only thought to find a telephone, to find help, to find out everything she could about a place called Sona. 

She remembers a dark-haired woman dressed in black, her pale makeup flawless in the Panamanian heat, her voice harsh as she barked orders at the two men on either side of her. She remembers the jolt up her arm as her hand connected with the woman’s face, then the press of thick fingers on her skin, holding her still, the tiny needle prick that had felt so familiar and so wrong in the same heartbeat. 

She remembers the shock of seeing Lincoln’s son, staring at her with his uncle’s eyes. She remembers being slumped in a chair and the sound of LJ’s voice, calling out for his father, saying _her_ name. She remembers hearing him apologising to someone she can’t see. _I’m so sorry. They got me and Sara._ She remembers looking at her broken fingernails, torn and bloodied from her desperate swipe at the dark-haired woman’s face and wondering why they weren’t hurting like they should be. 

She remembers crying without making a sound, the tears streaming silently down her face, then the prick of another needle and the world going black.

~*~

On the second day, she tries to run.

Her head is clearer, calmer. Many former addicts have a faster recovery time than non-users, and the irony might just choke her if she let it. The dark-haired woman is nowhere to be seen. The only guard is a bored-looking man who spends his time reading the newspaper and scratching himself. She’s seen him watching the other woman’s bare legs with hunger in his eyes, seen his gaze pawing at her own breasts, and knows there might be a way. And there has to be a way, because this is not how her life is going to end. Not hers, not LJ’s. She owes it to Michael and Lincoln almost as much as she owes it to herself. “Hey.”

He looks up at her, and she casts a knowing smile towards a sleeping LJ. “You’ve read that paper twice already.” Despite the fact each word makes her want to vomit, she manages to focus on making her voice thick and slow, as though her brain is still fuzzy from the morphine. “Must be boring?”

The man looks her up and down, a lazy inspection that makes her stomach shiver coldly, then he smiles, his teeth white in the half-light. “You got something more entertaining in mind?”

“Maybe.” If she wasn’t so frightened, she might be amused by his clichéd response. “You’d need to come a little closer, though.”

He tosses the paper aside and saunters across the room to where her arms are hooked around the arm of a rusty metal chair. When he crouches down beside her, one hand spread wide on her thigh, she raises her elbow sharply, putting everything she has into the blow. Even without his yelp of pain, the crunching sound and the squelch beneath her elbow would tell her that she’s broken his nose. 

He staggers backwards, his hands clutching at his face, and she leaps to her feet, her hands still bound as she darts across the room to LJ’s cot, dragging the metal chair behind her. The guard’s cry of pain has woken him, and he stares up at her with bleary eyes. She has time to urgently hiss, “Get up, quick,” before a hand falls heavily on her shoulder, spinning her around. Her guard’s nose and lips are smeared with blood; it makes his teeth look even whiter.

“Stupid bitch!” He slaps her across the face, hard enough to make her teeth rattle. Her knees hit the floor, even though she doesn’t remember falling, and through the pain exploding in her head she can see that LJ is wide-eyed, launching himself off the bed as far as the wrist restraint binding him to the bed frame will allow him.

“Leave her alone!”

She hears the slap of a hand against a soft boyish face, then LJ’s grunt of pain, and she knows there’s no way they’re getting out of here, not today. In the corner of the room, she can hear LJ crying softly, and her sense of failure rises up inside her, choking her. _I’m sorry_ , she tells him silently. _I’m so sorry_.

She doesn’t know how much time passes, but suddenly the dark-haired woman is there, her eerie blue eyes sparking with fury. “Give her another shot,” she mutters at Broken Nose, who is standing in a sullen silence behind her. There’s another man there now too, and as they reach for her, Sara twists her arm away, hiding the soft inside of her elbow, as if that will stop them. 

“Don’t.”

“Aw, come on.” The woman grabs her hair, jerking back her head. There’s a peculiar light shining in her pale blue eyes that makes Sara’s skin crawl. “Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for all these years? The perfect excuse to get high? You should be thanking me.”

“Go to hell,” Sara tells her, and has the satisfaction of seeing the blue eyes narrow in irritation. It’s a short-lived feeling, however, as the woman rubs her knuckles gently down the side of Sara’s face, her scarlet lips curved in a smirk.

“Oh, honey. I’m already there.”

Then the needle is in her arm and her skin stops crawling and her thoughts begin to blur around the edges. As they tighten the leather restraints around her wrists, she thinks of the look on Michael’s face when he’d seen her standing on that rusty little boat. 

_Thank God I found you guys._

_Thank God is right._

Another pinprick, this time in her neck, and the past slides into the present and she’s cold and Michael is gone. _I’m so sorry_ , she whispers inside her head, but there’s no one there to hear her.

~*~

On the third day, there are urgent whispers and guttural conversations, then someone hands her a telephone. “Keep it simple,” she hears a man’s voice telling her, “and if you don’t hang up the second I tell you, I’ll put a bullet through your brain.”

The telephone feels strange in her hand, even though she’s held one almost every day of her life for years. She lifts it to her ear, wincing as it clips the stinging cut on her cheek. She hears breathing, then she hears Michael’s voice, and the world begins to shift around her, closing in on her.

He tells her that he’s working very hard on making things right, and she wants nothing more than to shut her eyes and listen to his voice, but instead she talks to him about time and degrees and lost causes, willing him to understand, to hear everything she’s not saying. Somehow, she fumbles her words through a thick fog of sedation and fear and a mouth that is bruised and swollen, and somehow, he understands her.

She conjures up the thought of the photograph they’d taken of her, how she’d prayed they wouldn’t notice her finger pointing towards the thick black type that was her only hope. _Please Michael, please. Please hear what I’m saying._

When he tells her that he loves her, it’s almost like he’s beside her, breathing the words in her ear. When she opens her eyes, though, there’s nothing but the dirty window and the silence of her and LJ’s shared misery, and she wants to tear off her skin, if only to feel something other than the terror clawing at her bones.

The click of a gun being cocked is loud in her ear. Her stomach turns inside out, but she can’t let him know. “They’re telling me I have to hang up now.”

Then he’s gone, leaving her sitting with his nephew in a dank room that could well prove to be their grave, and all she can think is that she can’t bear to let him lose either one of them.

~*~

Michael understood everything she didn’t say because, on the fourth day, Lincoln almost saves them.

There’s shouting, male voices raised in anger and desperation and she wants to scream but her voice is trapped in her throat. She catches a glimpse of Lincoln's familiar profile as he bursts through the door, and she realises that the police had lied to her, that he had not been sent to Sona. She knows Michael must be there, because otherwise he would be _here_ , but he'd understood and he'd sent Lincoln to find them, and there’s a moment, a few heart-pounding seconds when she thinks it is going to work. 

In the blink of an eye, it all goes very wrong. 

She hears the sound of fists on flesh - _Lincoln, no no no_ \- then they're dragging her and LJ down uneven stairs and throw them into the back of a rattling van. There, lying twisted on the dirty metal floor, she finally has the chance to reach out to LJ, hooking her bound hands around his neck and pulling her against her. The guard watches, his expression impassive, as Lincoln’s son cries in her arms, his wiry body wracked with heaving sobs. “It’s okay,” she tells him. “They’ll find us. They won’t give up.”

“My dad,” he chokes out, his slim shoulders shaking with the effort. “What did they do to him? Did you see?”

She hadn’t seen, but she doesn’t hesitate to tell him what he wants to hear, praying desperately that it’s the truth. “You know your dad,” she whispers in his ear, rubbing her aching hands up and down his back as best she can. “Takes a lot to knock him down.” 

Thanks to the dark-haired woman's fondess for mouth gags, these are the first real words Sara's exchanged with Lincoln's son, and she desperately wants to keep talking to him, anything to take both of them away from the reality of where they are. But they’re not alone, and their companion obviously has no stomach for tender chitchat. “Be quiet,” he barks, making sure she sees the pistol resting on his thigh. Still shaking, LJ buries his face against her shoulder, and she promises herself that when all this is over, they will talk for hours and help each other remember, then help each other forget. 

She doesn’t know how long they drive, but as soon as the van stops, LJ is wrenched away from her. Her feet scramble on the metal floor as she desperately tries to keep hold of him, useless protests tumbling from her lips. “No, don’t, don’t do this, _please_ don’t do this!”

LJ’s bright blue eyes are wide and panicked, his hands clutching helplessly at the air between them. “Sara!” 

Their guard snarls at him as he gives him one last push into the waiting arms of his accomplice. “Shut the fuck _up_ , kid.”

Her last sight of LJ is his terrified face, his lips mouthing her name in protest, then the doors are slammed shut between them, closing her into the darkness.

~*~

On the evening of the fourth day, after they take LJ away from her, she realises there is a world of pain and fear she could never have imagined in her worst nightmares. “Just so you know, I don’t enjoy this kind of work,” the woman tells her in a voice that is all sharp edges and honeyed tones, “but I’ve got to earn my salary somehow.”

“I don’t understand.” Sara’s voice rattles inside her head, thick with blood and pain. A stranger’s voice. "What purpose could hurting me possibly serve?” 

“Well, my employers like to encourage good time-management skills.” The woman’s hands are cool against her throat, almost as cool as the blade tracing her spine. Funny the things you notice when you think you’re about to die. "So I thought I'd see if I could uncover any juicy pillow talk you might have shared with Scofield while reminding you about our little no-clever-clues-over-the-phone clause at the same time.” The woman gives her a wolfish smile. “Pretty efficient, don’t you think?”

The sound of Michael’s name on this person’s lips sends a rush of fury through her, giving her the strength to rear up, kicking out with her right leg. Her toe connects with the other woman’s shin, and she hears a throaty chuckle. 

“Aw, you’re angry at me now, aren’t you?” The voice is behind her, the tip of the blade trailing along the waistband of her jeans, making Sara arch away, seeking an escape that never comes. “What would you do to me first if you had the chance? Spit in my face? Scratch my other cheek?” Sara doesn’t have time to blink before the woman’s face swims in front of her, a blur of black and white and red. “Be my guest, sweetheart, but remember, it’ll just gonna to end up hurting you a lot more than it’ll hurt me.” 

When the pain starts again, she closes her eyes. She closes her eyes and she thinks of Michael. _It won’t always be like this,_ he’d told her once. She thinks of walking beside him, the sand beneath their feet. Or maybe snow. She doesn’t give a damn where they are. She tries to imagine asking him how he drinks his coffee, his favourite childhood book, what music he likes to hear when he’s driving. She wants to ask him about his mother. She wants to tell him about her own. She wants him to know that although she knows precious little about him, he’s the reason she has to live through this. 

“The thing is, Sara, that when you behave badly, it makes _me_ look bad, and that pisses me off.”

The woman reaches for her again, and sound of leather cracking in the air reaches her ears a split-second before the whip slices into her skin. The scent of blood fills her nostrils, mingling with sweat and fear, and the sound of her pain tears at her throat until it’s raw. It goes on and on and on until her mind starts curling in on itself, going around and around in circles until nothing and everything makes sense.

_Michael said it won’t always be like this but she’s so very tired and her skin is screaming and she is screaming and she needs to stay alive and she needs to do this for her father and for herself and for all the blood and the pain and the loss and for Michael and for Lincoln and for LJ._

This time, when the world goes black, there are no tears.

~*~

On the fifth day, she wakes with a start, her stinging back pressed hard against the rough wooden wall of her cell. She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she must have done so, because sunlight is streaming through the small barred window.

She’s not alone.

There’s a woman standing in front of her, but it’s not the woman she knows. It’s an older woman, dressed in a factory worker’s uniform, her hair hidden beneath a cap. She crouches down, soft Spanish words sliding from her lips as she presses something cold and metallic into Sara’s hand. 

It’s a key. 

If it’s a trap, Sara doesn’t care. She fumbles as she shoves it into her jeans pocket, nodding and smiling through the tears that are suddenly welling up in her eyes, then a roar pounds into her ears and the stranger’s blood arcs across Sara’s face, hot and metallic in her mouth, stinging her eyes. 

The woman’s eyes are wide and sightless as her body slumps sideways to the ground, the weight of her sending a cloud of dust drifting through the sunlight. Through the red haze of blood and gun smoke, Sara looks up and sees the dark-haired woman shaking her head. “It’s _very_ hard to get good help these days.” 

Mute with horror, Sara watches as they drag the body away, leaving a trail of blood-soaked dirt. The dark-haired woman doesn’t come near her. She doesn't touch her. She doesn't find the key. She merely gives her a smile that chills Sara’s blood as she follows her men and the body out of the small cell. The door shuts and locks with a dull click that jars Sara’s bones. She hears the roar of an engine, then nothing.

She sits alone for what feels like a very long time, her eyes closed as she huddles against the wall of her tiny cell, the key in her pocket a siren song, calling to her to dash herself against the rocks. She watches the sky through the barred window, her fingertips tracing the shape of the key through the filthy denim of her jeans. When the sky has turned from azure to black, she puts her hands back against the wall, slowly rising to her feet like a newborn calf, her legs weak and unsteady beneath her. 

Every step she takes feels as loud as a clanging gong. 

No one comes.

Her hands are slick with sweat and blood that’s not all hers. It takes her three attempts to put the key in the lock, then she is pushing open the door, and stepping out into the darkness. 

No one is there. 

She feels the emptiness pressing down on her, the thick darkness around her threatening to swallow her whole. She has no idea of where she is, no idea where LJ is. She has no money, no water, no ID. She can stay here and die, or she can run.

Tilting back her head, she studies the stars above, her mind working furiously. _East_ , she decides, her feet already starting to move. _She needs to go east._

She starts to run.

She runs until the sole of her right foot is torn and bleeding and her legs are trembling beneath her. She runs until the sweat drips into every single cut on her skin, making her grit her teeth in agony. And as she runs, she replays her last conversation with Michael in her head over and over again, the words keeping time with her feet. _I love you I love you I love you._

Just before dawn, just when she thinks she’s might be ready to lie down and make her peace with dying, she comes to a highway. Somewhere in the back of her head, a little voice tells her that where there is a highway, there will be a gas station. Putting her hands on her hips, she bends over at the waist, gasping for breath, grasping at what remains of her hope and her faith. Finally, when she feels as though she can breathe without choking, she takes one more step, then another, then another until her feet are moving and _she_ is moving and she is going to live through this.

 _Wait for me_ , she thinks.

~*~

The sun is high in the sky when she liberates a phone book from the public telephone at the first gas station she finds, her trembling finger trailing down the listing for women’s shelters.

An hour later, after hitching a ride from an American truck driver who talks far too much about young girls who make bad choices, she’s telling the reception staff at the shelter that she’s just left her violent boyfriend and needs a place to stay for a few nights. One look at her bloody-splattered clothes and swollen mouth obviously convinces them she’s a worthy case, and she’s offered a bed for the next four nights. 

Later, she will barely remember this conversation, let alone filling out the forms with a fake name purloined from two girls with whom she’d gone to elementary school. She does remember shaking her head when they advise her to contact the police to report the assault. She gives them an emphatic _no_ , saying her boyfriend will know it was her who called the police and that he’ll track her down. The staff wearily agree, as if they’ve already heard this story ten times today, and Sara feels a faint twinge for her lie. 

She takes a shower in the communal bathroom, smacking her fist against the tiled wall as the hot water hits the welts on her back. She feels so numb, so dead, the pain is almost welcome. 

There’s a nurse on staff, a kind-faced older woman who gives her worn but clean clothes to wear while her own are being washed - Sara has already decided she will burn them as soon as she gets the chance - and murmurs sympathetically under her breath as she dabs antiseptic ointment on Sara’s back and the soles of her feet. 

Afterwards, alone in her narrow bunk bed, Sara thinks of tending to the livid burn on Michael’s back, his skin hot beneath her hands, his mouth gentle on hers, and she finally lets herself cry.

~*~

She dreams.

She dreams of a mocking voice, of scarlet lips and white teeth, warm hands with sharp nails wrapping around a sharper blade that slices and opens and stings. She dreams of blood and a stranger’s dead eyes staring at her in silent surprise. When she wakes, she is drenched in sweat, her throat raw, her hands frozen into claws as if to ward off an attacker. She is alone.

She is alive.

Dressed in another woman's clothes, she seeks out the staff at the front counter. There’s a young man working this shift, his body language reassuringly warm and unthreatening as she approaches. “What can I do for you, miss?”

His eyes grow wide when she says the word _Sona_. “A terrible place. A cesspool.”

“How do I get there from here?”

His eyes widen even further. “But miss, didn’t you hear? It burned.”

She feels dizzy. Gripping the edge of the counter, she stares at him over the top of his newspaper. “What?”

“It burned. Down to nothing, they said on the radio.”

Bile is rising in her throat, thickening her voice. “What about the prisoners?”

“Dead, mostly, I think.”

Somehow, she manages to make it back to the communal bathroom before she’s violently ill.

_Burned._

Michael had been in that place because of her. 

It had burned down to nothing.

Nothing. 

It had all been for nothing.

As though in a dream, she rises to her feet and splashes her face and rinses out her mouth, then walks slowly back to the front counter. She makes eye-contact with no one, afraid of what she might do if someone is foolish enough to offer her a smile. The man behind the counter pushes his newspaper to one side and looks at her anxiously as she approaches, and she wonders vaguely how hasty her earlier retreat had been. “Are you ill? Would you like me to call the nurse?”

“Could you please tell me,” she says slowly, every syllable feeling heavy and dull on her tongue, “if there’s a telephone I can use?”

~*~

Tears fill her eyes at the sound of his voice, and it’s all she can do to get out his name. “Bruce?”

There’s a sharp inhalation of breath. “Sara?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you? Did you make contact with Michael?”

His first question is easy enough to answer. The second one is something she can’t bear to remember. “I’m still in Panama.” 

“Are you alright?”

“No.” Her throat closes over that one word as the enormity of her sorrow wells up inside her, pushing her heart hard against her ribs. “I’m not.”

He barely gives her enough time to finish that last word. “Do you want me to come down there?”

“ _No_. Don’t come down here. It’s not safe.” _Burned. Burned down to nothing._

“What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to wire me some cash without anyone being able to follow the money trail. Can you do that?”

“I’ve worked in politics most of my life, Sara. Of course I can do that.” He pauses, and for a few seconds the only sound is the sound of her crying softly into the phone. “What else?”

She presses the telephone receiver hard against her lips, welcoming the sting of the hard plastic against her torn lip. “I need you to get in touch with the Panamanian authorities, have them put out a missing persons report for Lincoln’s son, LJ.” 

“Of course, but what-“

“I also need you to find out everything you can about a prison called Sona.” Each word feels like glass in her throat, but she has to get them out. She has to keep talking because if she stops talking, there will be nothing but silence in her head. “It burned down yesterday, and I need to know if all the prisoners are accounted for.”

“Sara, what is going on?“

His voice is rich with confusion, but she doesn’t have the stomach to explain. Not now. “Please, Bruce, can you just do those things for me? I need you to do them.” The thought of leaving without knowing exactly what’s happened to them - Michael and Lincoln and LJ - stabs at her like a dull blade, but she can’t do this alone. If she stays here, the Company will find her. If they find her, they will kill her, and it will have all been for nothing. 

“What about you?”

She closes her eyes, seeing a kaleidoscope of faces she’s so very afraid she’ll never see again. LJ. Lincoln. Michael. _Michael_. “I’m coming home.”

~*~

Bruce meets her at a downtown Chicago bus station two days later. His weathered face crumples into a frown as she steps out of the bus, just another anonymous passenger with no luggage who jumps at the slightest jarring noise. She smells of sweat and antiseptic lotion, her hair lank against her neck, the healing cuts on her back sticking to her too-large shirt. Bruce’s eyes widen at the sight of her, confirming that she’s looked better on almost every occasion in her life, then he opens his arms and she walks straight into them, her fingers clutching at the soft material of his sweater as she tries very hard not to weep. “Have you managed to find anything?”

“No.” He looks at her, sorrow glittering in his faded blue eyes, and she has to turn her head. “Are you alright?” He watches her as she gingerly eases herself away from him. “Sara, are you hurt?”

A sob rises in her throat at the tenderness in his voice, and she has the strangest urge to pinch herself. A few weeks ago, they’d sat in her father’s office and drunk tea together. “I’m okay,” she says firmly, one hand still clutching his arm. She can’t tell him about her injuries. If he knew about them, he’d have her popping painkillers when all she needs is antibiotics and rest. She needs a clear head, and if that means living with the pain, then so be it.

He gently installs her in the front passenger seat of his car. Behind the tinted windows and the locked doors, she almost feels safe. They drive in silence for several miles, then she opens her mouth and says the words that have been pounding in her head for the last two days. 

“I think Michael might be dead,” she tells him, then tearing sobs are wracking her body, stealing her voice. Bruce’s hand flutters towards her but she waves it away, knowing she can’t bear for anyone to touch her, not now, not when the one person whose touch she craves is gone gone _gone_. She feels him press something into her hand - _God_ , it’s a folded man’s handkerchief, just like the ones her father used to keep in his pocket - and she buries her face in it, long past the point of embarrassment.

He says nothing during the remainder of the journey, but the silence is strangely comforting, and somehow she manages to choke back the grief that is stripping layers off her heart with every new breath she takes. Thirty minutes after meeting her at the bus station, he pulls up in the driveway of a small bungalow style house. She stares dully at the neat façade, feeling utterly detached. “Where are we?”

“This house belongs to my secretary’s brother. It’s a rental property that’s between leases.” Bruce turns off the engine and gives her a reassuring smile. “There’s an excellent security system and I’m the only person who knows the real identity of the new tenant.”

She follows him around the interior of the small house, twisting her hands together, pushing her fingers hard into her palms. Her fingernails cut into her skin, and she feels the answering throb of blood ripple beneath the Company’s handiwork on her back. She grabs onto the pain with both hands, using it to center herself. She is alive, and while she is alive, she will not give up on Michael and Lincoln and LJ. “Bruce, I can’t begin to thank you -”

“Your father was my very good friend, Sara,” he cuts her off gently, “and there’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for him, or for you.” His mouth twists in a bittersweet half-smile. “I couldn’t save Frank, but I’m planning on saving his daughter.” 

The enormity of what he’s doing for her is overwhelming. He knows the risks, and yet he’s thrown himself into the wolf’s den alongside her. Reaching out for his weathered hands, she smiles at him through the tears that are silently rolling down her face. “Thank you.”

~*~

Time passes, and she finds herself treading water on dry land. She sleeps little, eats only what she can choke down, and dreams more than she’s ever dreamed in her life. She tells Bruce everything she knows about Michael and Lincoln and LJ's last whereabouts - which is pitifully little - but shares only the bare bones of her own time in Panama. He knows, though, or at least suspects, that something very bad happened to her down there. She sees it in his eyes every time he looks at her. _Would Michael look at her the same way_ , she wonders, then the fear will slam into her, clawing at her faith, ripping it into tiny little pieces.

At night, she checks the security system three times before she climbs into bed, but that doesn’t stop her from awakening with a sharp cry of fear every single time. Some nights she feels the slice of a blade through her flesh, other nights she’s watching LJ being dragged away from her, or the blood-splattered face of a woman she didn’t know, a woman who died trying to help her. And some nights, the worst nights, she dreams of a building she’s never seen, alive with flames as it melts flesh and bone and breath, burning down to nothing. Every morning she opens her eyes onto a world that holds no joy for her, and she wonders how much longer she can bear to keep opening them.

The cuts on her back begin to heal, as she knew they would. She pads barefoot around the house, and soon the blisters on her feet are nothing more than a bad memory. Her body is repairing itself, despite her insomnia and lack of appetite, and she can only wait and pray for her mind and her heart to do the same. There are days when she is compelled by a rage so great she can scarcely breathe, filling her with the urge to claw at the walls and the windows, and others when she literally cannot find the strength to swing her legs over the edge of the bed and put her feet on the floor. 

She watches the news channels incessantly, but sees everything but the one thing she wants to see. Bruce comes to the house every morning on his way to his office, and every evening on his way home, as solicitous as any nurse. He asks how she’s sleeping and if she’s eating properly, and accepts the reassuring lies she gives him in return. Every day she hopes will be the day he tells her he’s heard something about Michael and his family, but it never happens. She knows he’s doing his best, making as many enquiries as he dares, but that doesn’t help ease the growing ache of _nothingness_ hollowing out her heart. 

One morning, he calls her just as she’s scraping the cold remains of the breakfast she foolishly thought she might finish into the trash. “I have some news for you.”

Her plate clatters loudly on the countertop as she clutches at the phone with both hands. “Okay.”

“I didn’t tell you earlier because I needed to be sure-”

“Bruce, please.” She can barely get the words out. “Just tell me.” 

“A former patient of yours rang my office yesterday morning.”

She gropes blindly along the counter to the nearby table, knowing she needs to sit down before she falls down. “What?”

“He’s in Chicago, looking for you.” _Alive alive alive alive. Michael’s alive._ Her face feels odd, she thinks, then she realises she’s smiling - really smiling - for the first time in days. Or was that weeks? “He wanted to know if I’d heard from you.”

She’s sitting down now, although she has no memory of doing so. “Did he say anything about his brother or his nephew?”

“No, he didn’t have time.”

Her stomach contracts. “What do you mean?”

There’s a pause, then a heavy sigh. “I’m afraid the local authorities picked him up while he was speaking to me. He spent last night in police custody.”

Her joy is suddenly tempered with fear. She can’t lose him, not when she’s so close to finding him again. “Bruce, if he’s in custody, he’s not safe.”

“I’m leaving for the police station now,” he says, answering her next question before she can ask it. “If they allow me to post bail for him, I will.”

The chair scrapes on the linoleum floor as she pushes it back and gets to her feet. “I want to come with you.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?”

Pressing the phone hard against her ear, she walks quickly from the kitchen to the bedroom, intent on finding the shoes Bruce had brought her on the second day she’d been here. “Yes.”

Bruce hesitates, and when he goes on, his voice is filled with a gentle diplomacy that has her stopping in her tracks. “Sara, from what he said, the man was obviously under the impression you were dead.” 

She feels as though she’s just swallowed a handful of ice. She remembers learning that Sona had burned to the ground, how her first thought had been that it was her fault, that he would have never been in that place if not for her. Whatever guilt she’s felt over the last few weeks, she is suddenly very afraid it will be nothing compared to the burden Michael’s been carrying.

Bruce clears his throat. “Wouldn’t you prefer to meet in a more peaceful place than a busy police station with no privacy whatsoever?”

Closing her eyes, she tries to remember what it was like to be alone with Michael in a room that didn’t reek of blood and dirt and fear. “Yes.” 

“Sit tight,” he says hastily, as if wanting to seize on her capitulation before she changes her mind. “If I can, I’ll bring him to you.”

“Please try.”

“You know I will.”

The next three hours feel more like thirty. She carries her cell phone with her everywhere she goes, terrified of missing Bruce’s call. She showers, afterwards studying her pale, gaunt face in the mirror with a flicker of distaste. She looks as though she’s spent the last month living in a cave. _Which_ , she thinks grimly, _isn’t far from the truth_. As she dresses, she can’t help thinking there may have a time when she would have bemoaned the fact that her benefactor’s taste in clothing is vastly different to her own. The notion of being concerned about her wardrobe when she still has no idea if LJ or Lincoln are alive is unthinkable. Sinking down onto the bed, she puts her head in her hands, her eyes suddenly burning. _Please. Please let them be okay._

She’s still sitting on her bed when her phone finally rings, and she flips it open with shaking hands. “Hello?”

“I’ve just posted bail for your friend and his brother,” Bruce tells her in a quiet voice that brims with the pleasure of a job well done. “His nephew is fine, and we’ll be with you in twenty minutes.”

“Thank you.” Her hands shake even more as she closes the phone, but this time she’s trembling with pure, unadulterated joy. They’re alive. All of them. They’re alive and Michael is on his way. Dropping her phone onto the bed beside her, she wraps her arms around herself and knows this is the reason why she kept opening her eyes every morning.

She doesn’t move from her bedroom. Like a small child awaiting the arrival of a favourite family visitor, she waits at the window, her hands pale and tense on the wooden sill, her cheek resting against the metal blinds. 

She feels faintly sick with nervous anticipation by the time Bruce’s car pulls up in the driveway. Taking several deep breaths, she watches raptly as the front passenger door is flung open before the vehicle comes to a complete stop. Her eyes are still burning but she doesn’t dare blink, just in case it all vanishes. 

Michael clambers from the car, and her heart leaps into her throat. His long legs and arms are awkward in his haste, and she has to press her hands to her mouth to keep from calling out to him through the locked window. He looks exactly the same and completely different, and a shock of longing rips through her, turning her legs to jelly. He vanishes from her sight almost immediately, and she can picture him waiting impatiently for Bruce to unlock the front door as clearly as she can see the strips of sunlight beaming through the tatty window blinds.

Her heart soars.

She unconsciously smoothes her hands through her hair, feeling it curl loosely around her fingers, then turns to face the closed door of her bedroom. She has time to think that she’s been lost for so very long, then the door is opening and Michael is there, the emotion blazing in his face telling her every single thing she's ever wanted to know, and she knows she's been found.

~*~


End file.
